Hydroponics - Survival food?

Oct 26, 2010
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RE: Hydroponics for survival
by: Rick from CGFF

Hi Peter,
Thanks for your comment, glad you are looking in to building a hydroponics system, it's a lot of fun to work with.

Which plants to grow is a tricky question, one that I'm still trying to figure out for myself.
I guess it all depends on how much over-all hydroponic growing area you have. A hydroponics system like mine could never provide enough food to survive on, but it can supplement your other food supplies, or provide additional variety such as herbs etc.

I think the biggest lesson I learned this year with hydroponics is that the more different types of plants you grow in a single hydroponics system, the more difficult it becomes to grow them successfully, because each plant type requires different growing conditions.

For example growing tomatoes with lettuce was a bad idea. The tomatoes were heavy feeders and needed a lot of food, while the lettuce were struggling to cope with all the food in the water.

So my advice right now would be to choose one type of plant per hydroponic system.

As for plant types, Tomatoes and lettuce and other leafy greens are most popular as they are straight-forward to grow, and great for beginners.

I've also heard cucumbers and squashes do well grown in hydroponics, but I've not tried that myself.

Over-all I think the golden rule for any survival food garden is to grow only what you know you will eat.

I appreciate this didn't fully answer your question, but I hope it helped in some way.

Good luck with your hydroponics system, and do be sure to send us in a picture or a video if you make one :o)

Cheers
Rick.

Hydroponics - Survival food?

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